Very seldom does a person like NHRA founder Wally Parks come along at the right place at the right time for all the right Freakin’ reasons. Boy, Wally sure did that two-fold. From Bonneville to Pomona, it’s all good.

For me, any motorsports story, especially the drags, it goes back to mom and dad. If there were no Wally Parks, there would have been no place for mom and dad Sargent to take this little cotton-top terror to ingest the fumes of burning alcohol and nitro. Oh yea, the precursor to Ritalin.

There would have been no place for me to trip up and down the wooden stairs of Dallas International Raceway or Green Valley Raceway before tearing out to get Cha Cha’s autograph. No place to check out the O.G. of playboy Raymond Beadle in the Blue Max or gaze at the Snake and Mongoose.

Without Wally, it would have been all dirt, all the time with the biggest names in 70’s Motocross. That’s all we had in Dallas, the drags and MX. I could live with Smith, DeCoster, Weinert, Ellis, Hannah, etc. But, the thrill of looking at something with four wheels going straight for five or six seconds at "loud" speed was just Freakin’ thrilling for this little long hair.

I never told my dad, I think my manhood dropped at a young age because of the drags’ rumbling. That’s why Cha Cha looked so sexy to this 12 year old I guess. Got to be.

Wally meant as much or more to automobiles, yes automobiles, as Henry Ford, Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler, Jack Roush and Barney Oldfield.

He took what every human being with a driver’s license has done and put us in our place. Yep, when we gassed it at the anticipation of the dropping of the green light on a public road, Wally knew better. He had a safer, saner piece of concrete for us to man-up. The drag strip.

To you Wally…you now join up another big time speed freak we lost this year, motorsports legend and NASCAR big boy, Bill France Jr. Damn.

Maybe you are finally getting your day in court with an eternal speeding ticket and you’re now having to face the big judge in the sky. Sh**, you don’t need a lawyer to get you off of this one, just show her your credential…N.H.R.A.

Don’t forget to pull your chutes Wally.

That's what I Freakin' think.

You?

Shoot me an email @ kennys@speedfreaks.tv or give me a holler at the office 818-995-9159.

P.S.  Thanks Hollander.